Kim Chi--Radish Kim Chi

I remember when I first set eyes on an Asian radish. I was accustomed to European style radishes, which are small and cute and pink. These radishes are huge and kind of scary looking! Korean radishes (like the one shown here) are regularly 3-5 pounds, much larger than a large baking potato. There are some species of daikon that can reach up to a hundred pounds.



The flavor is a little milder than that of their European cousins, crispy and a little sweet. There are many ways that it’s used. In spring they are eaten young and fresh. They can be made into soups, sliced or grated into salads, stir fried, stewed…and of course pickled. Throughout Asia there are a variety of radish pickles, but today I’m talking about Korean style radish kim chi. I often like to make a lunch of just radish kim chi and rice. It’s surprisingly filling.

This recipe is very similar to last week’s recipe. The main difference is in technique. I like to add a little bit of mirin or rice wine. For this recipe I used the white and green Korean radish, but daikon can be substituted.

Per radish:

1 or 2 tsp salt (to taste)
Korean red pepper flakes to taste, approximately 4 tbsp.
One or two green onions, minced
Asian chives, minced
1-3 cloves garlic, minced
2-3 tbsp dashi or fish stock (optional)
1 tbsp sugar (optional)
2-3 tbsp mirin or rice wine (optional)

Peel the radish and cut into roughly bite sized pieces.


Salt the radish well, mixing it to make sure that all surfaces are salted. Allow to sit for a couple hours.

After the radishes have sat for a bit and started to soften, add the other ingredients and mix well.

Pack into jars as well as possible and tighten the lids. You will most likely have the radish sticking up out of the liquid at this point and need an extra jar or two. Let sit overnight.

The next day open the jars and redistribute the radish slices. Chances are if you used three jars yesterday you can redistribute the contents of one jar between the other two. Press down the radish so it is completely or nearly completely submerged in the liquid.

In this recipe, fermentation happens very quickly and very vigorously. You will want to open the jars every day for the first few days to allow gas to escape. Even though the radish starts out exposed to air in the jars, the fermentation protects the radish from contamination. Naturally, as with all fermented foods, keep an eye on it, smell it, and taste it to make sure that it is fermenting correctly. This version is ready in a couple days to a week depending on the weather. It doesn’t keep as long as the cabbage kim chi so I recommend refrigerating if you plan to keep it longer than a month.

This is a good recipe to start in a larger container and press in the traditional manner. However, this IS Life in a Jar, and this is the method I first used with great success. Part of my purpose in creating this blog is to demonstrate how easy these techniques are, and that it doesn’t take a lot of time nor fancy (read “expensive”) equipment to create wonderful and healthy fermented foods. If I can do this in my humble bachelor’s kitchen with just a few jars, then anyone can do it…YOU can do it, and I hope that you are inspired to try these techniques if you haven’t yet. You will be glad you did.

Thank you very much for reading. In later posts I will explore different techniques and recipes with radishes because they are so tasty and versatile. Next week, I’ll be going in a slightly different direction and start discussing sprouts.

But for now, it's lunchtime: